An exceptional customer experience is useful in capturing and retaining mobile device customers. One component of customer satisfaction is obtaining feedback from existing customers regarding their current mobile products/services. This feedback may be used by a provider of mobile products/services, for example, to troubleshoot and remedy connection problems, to determine how happy their customers are with their current mobile product/service offerings, and to update future product/service offerings based on that determination to enhance the customer experience.
Today, mobile device customers provide feedback on their mobile products/services by, for example, completing a survey on the web, calling the provider of their mobile product/service, talking with a representative in a store owned by the provider of their mobile product/service, and/or logging their comments in an online forum.
A customer feedback session may be started because a customer requests assistance of a customer service representative in addressing an issue the customer is having with their mobile device or their network service. During a typical session, the customer may provide his or her customer identification number, telephone number (e.g., mobile device number (MDN)), the identifier of the mobile device (IMEI or ISMI), the model of the mobile device, and the manufacturer of the mobile device, to a customer service representative and/or to a system used by the representative. Based on “symptoms” of the problem the customer is experiencing, the customer service representative follows a “script” from a user interface in order to identify (i.e., “troubleshoot”) the cause of the problem, and hopefully resolve the problem. If the problem is likely with the mobile device, the troubleshooting often involves an interaction between the customer and the customer service representative during which the customer is asked to manually change different operating or device configuration parameters in the mobile device to assist in identifying and/or resolving the problem.
This interaction between the customer service representative and the customer may be time consuming and require the customer to perform various changes to mobile device settings, verbally provide long strings of alphanumeric characters to the customer service representative, and the like. As a result, the customer, even when the problem is resolved, may provide feedback indicating that the call was a negative experience due to the time it took for the issues to be resolved. Also, any errors made during this exchange with the representative can be very frustrating to the customer. In order to assist both the customer and the customer service representative in quickly resolving the customer's mobile device problem, a set of protocols were developed.
The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Device Management (DM) working group and the Data Synchronization (DS) working group have defined a device management protocol (DM) that provides a unified client/server interface to device management. The unified interface reduces the amount of manual tasks that a customer has to perform with the mobile device. The OMA DM is more robust in terms of remote device diagnostics than other remote device diagnostic solutions of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
The device manufacturers (i.e., OEMs) that do install OMA DM when manufacturing mobile devices typically implement a DM client that is packaged with OMA DM firmware on each mobile device. The OMA DM client interacts with an OMA DM server to provide remote device management. The OMA DM server is typically implemented by a mobile network operator (MNO) that provides mobile communication services (e.g., voice and data communications) to the customer. The OMA DM protocol specifies an exchange of data packages during a session. The OMA DM server initiates troubleshooting commands and the OMA DM client is expected to execute the commands and return a troubleshooting result via a reply message. The results are limited to information about the device on which the OMA DM client is installed (e.g., mobile device number (MDN), firmware version, etc.).
Better feedback mechanisms would enable a provider of mobile products/services to better serve and anticipate the needs of their customers. Accordingly, better mobile devices feedback methods, systems, and apparatus would be useful.